ABSTRACT
The Moviola is a machine that was used for editing celluloid film, primarily from 1924 to 1970, with some editors using it for longer. “Moviola” is the trademark name of the upright model invented by Iwan Serrurier and made by the Moviola Company in America. Moviolas run film with foot pedals and have a four-inch wide viewer that magnifies the film frame in it. The purpose of the Moviola is to function as a tool for editing film. Editing with the Moviola, and to a lesser extent the flatbed, is an intensely physical process. The editor works with the machine, the governor of its noise and moving parts. The fundamental techniques of analog film editing remained stable from the introduction of the Moviola in the 1920s through the adoption of flatbed machines in the late 1960s to the rise of digital editing in the 1980s. Nonlinear editing systems mimic one of the key features of the Moviola workflow.
